Mobility, fixity, agency: Australia’s working holiday programme

Abstract

Recent writings on transnational corporeal<br/>mobility have been dominated by at least two<br/>concerns: mobility as ever-expanding or even<br/>complete; and mobility as determined by<br/>economic restructuring. In this paper, I<br/>confront such writings with empirical material<br/>from primarily qualitative research into<br/>Australia’s working holiday programme,<br/>which was established in 1975 to allow British<br/>citizens between the ages of 18 and 26 to work<br/>and holiday in Australia for a period of up to<br/>12 months. And I confront such writings with<br/>M. P. Smith’s (2001) agency-oriented approach<br/>to transnational urbanism, which I extend<br/>with two arguments. Firstly, since agency is<br/>not a simple possession of intent or motivated<br/>human beings, the achievement of mobility<br/>rests on both human actors and non-human<br/>actants. Secondly, since mobility is not simply<br/>increasing, the achievement of mobility rests<br/>alongside what we might call relative<br/>contingent fixity